Scripps News 11:30 AM from 11:58 to 12:03 in US/Central

conversation.

>>

The concern has been that this has been downplay. This is a massive attack on the country's health care delivery system. It targeted the country's largest health insurance company, United Health care. But it is crippling many hospitals certainly in Florida and across the country.

>>

to

>>

submit insurance claims to hear that. it it's leading billions of dollars.

>>

Payments that are not being made. That's cash flow for hospitals allows them to pay. They're doctors, they're nurses, all of their care providers. This is a massive attack with significant consequences in here we are in day 12 of this attack. We are extremely concerned about how long this is going to continue. And there hasn't been a great deal of transparency from United about the fix to this significant cyber attack.

>>

So use a metaphor. It's kind of like creating gridlock where if you're trying to file a claim of insurance, you can get your prescription correct.

>>

this is you know, there's been such consolidation in the market. United owns this massive clearinghouse that many hospitals have dependency on to get these claims filed. Think of it in terms of a utility infrastructure. We were talking about. And electric company and the dependency we have in this country on our utilities. It is the same framework that we're thinking about in health care and it is it is not only submitting claims its prescribing of medications, its eligibility verification, and it's not just United Healthcare that uses this changes clearinghouse known as change healthcare. There are other insurance companies that use it. So the magnitude and scope of this attack and its impact are hard to overstate. And while we have large health systems that are trying to devote resources to look at ways to manually submit claims. And by the way, that is fraught with risk a human ear you're taking what is a sophisticate, automated system and trying to convert a manual which is going to be prone to errors and then ultimately claims being denied. But we've got many small hospitals. It simply do not have the resources to take staff to dedicate to manually filing claims and also those small world hospitals do not have that cash flow to whether this kind of crippling impact to their cash flow to their ability to meet payroll.

>>

We are digging deeper into how this hack is affecting patients. Thousands of patients are facing an uphill battle with their prescriptions on filled. As we just heard for jab with Scripps News. Detroit looks at any possible solutions. If you're struggling right now.

>>

Doctor Ahmed up audio runs of pain management clinic in Waterford for most of his patients. Medication is vital. Lot of our patients are elderly. A lot of co-morbidities make adverse effect in lots of different ways. But since February, 21st Doctor Pavia has been unable to fill his patient's prescriptions after hackers took down change Healthcare's electronic portal 250 patients came in who were not able to get the prescriptions filled when a look at the and field and they needed a paper prescription over the last few years. Health care providers have been mandated to shift to electronic prescription portal. And that's why Doctor Pavia says many clinicians no longer have paper prescriptions. Luckily, doctor Bobby. I was able to dig out some of his old ones, but doctor says the fact that folks weren't informed about the outage also led to the confusion last week alone referring provider of private. Your Time's Up is because they thought that our fault.

>>

Until they realize later on that it's affecting them as well as of today. The portal has been down for nearly 2 weeks

>>

owns a child care. chi change the only able to engineer Paul term. Charles, you're called later. Thank you for calling.

>>

And that's responsive and getting all throughout today. I even reached out to United Health Group, which owns change health care. But I'm still waiting to hear back. Meanwhile, to get a better perspective and speak to folks impacted by the outage. I came to I pharmacy in Livonia. That's where pharmacists, Rudy, not Jim highlighted another issue. You can read the process and is seeing right now. You count comes chance to form a shape and a vote for rebates.

>>

This means that even in cases where the prescriptions are coming through pharmacies